ESPN Scores & Standings

Team-level scores and standings for major sports leagues, pulled from ESPN's public sports.core.api.espn.com JSON API (the site.api.espn.com host returns 403 from some networks, so this actor never touches it).

No player/athlete data is collected — team rows only.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
sport	string	yes	football	ESPN sport slug: football, basketball, baseball, hockey, ...
league	string	yes	nfl	ESPN league slug: nfl, nba, mlb, nhl, ...
mode	string	yes	standings	standings or scores
season	integer	no	current year	e.g. 2025
seasonType	integer	no	2	1 = preseason, 2 = regular season, 3 = postseason
week	integer	no	1	scores mode only

The default input (football/nfl/standings) always returns a full set of current standings rows, in season or out — teams and their (possibly 0-0) records exist as soon as the season object is created, well before kickoff.

Output

One dataset row per team (standings mode) or per game (scores mode).

Standings row (real output from a smoke run, 2026 preseason):

{
  "sport": "football",
  "league": "nfl",
  "season": 2026,
  "seasonType": 2,
  "group": "American Football Conference",
  "team": "Buffalo Bills",
  "teamAbbreviation": "BUF",
  "summary": "0-0",
  "wins": "0",
  "losses": "0",
  "ties": "0",
  "winPercent": ".000",
  "pointsFor": "0",
  "pointsAgainst": "0",
  "streak": "-",
  "playoffSeed": "0"
}

Scores row (real output, season:2025, week:1):

{
  "sport": "football",
  "league": "nfl",
  "season": 2025,
  "seasonType": 2,
  "week": 1,
  "gameId": "401772510",
  "date": "2025-09-05T00:20Z",
  "name": "Dallas Cowboys at Philadelphia Eagles",
  "venue": "Lincoln Financial Field",
  "status": "Final",
  "homeTeam": "Philadelphia Eagles",
  "homeTeamAbbreviation": "PHI",
  "homeScore": 24,
  "awayTeam": "Dallas Cowboys",
  "awayTeamAbbreviation": "DAL",
  "awayScore": 20,
  "winner": "Philadelphia Eagles"
}

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.00085 per game-row (one charge per dataset row pushed, whether a game or a standings row) — 15% under the best-rated comparable actor on the Store. Never charged on an empty result.

Limits / known gaps

• Standings mode auto-detects the two-conference-group shape used by NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB. A single-table league (e.g. soccer) exposes its table at a different endpoint and isn't wired up — only add if a buyer needs it.
• Scores mode is week-indexed, which fits weekly-schedule sports (NFL, college football). Daily-schedule sports (NBA/MLB/NHL) can still be queried — ESPN indexes them by week internally too — but "week" won't map to a calendar week the way a buyer might expect.
• ESPN's core API is undocumented and public; it can change shape without notice.